“We need to find the solution to world peace.”
The statement came from a friend who couldn’t wrap her head around the American election results and pretty much everything that’s been happening since.
As it happens, I’ve had several people echo that same sentiment to me recently, for more or less the same reasons.
But I disagree.
Because I believe that we already know what the solution to world peace is. We’ve always known. What we DO need to do, though, is get our collective asses in gear, get over ourselves, and commit to making it work.
The solution to world peace
That solution is a paradox at once simple and complex. And it is this: community.
We already know the solution to world peace. We just need to commit to making it happen. Click To TweetThe way to solve world peace is to create a world-wide community. One in which we all work together as a team to preserve this planet and nurture its people – ALL its people.
The how of the matter should be the main concern of all people of conscience, wherever and whoever they happen to be. This is of particular importance as we are dragged forth into a volatile Trump-led era of rapidly unravelling global relations.
But how can you concentrate on building peace when you’re just so damned angry?
How to respond to the incomprehensible?
Like many people all around the world right now, I’ve been watching the never-ending stream of WTF-moments pouring out of the post-inauguration White House with a growing sense of incredulity and dread.
And I’ve been struggling trying to find a constructive way of responding to it.
We just watched someone get elected as the leader of the free world based on a platform of lies and outright hatred. How did this happen?
My first instinct was to lash out. To react in anger and fight what I see as the incomprehensible rise to power of a movement the world thought it had dealt with decisively during the Second World War.
In many ways, there is an Orwellian nightmare taking shape in front of us and, quite frankly, it scares the hell out of me. And silence in this matter is outright complicity in whatever pain and suffering will befall the people of this world because of it.
But what we resist persists… doesn’t it?
But I work in a field of light-workers and spiritual types. And many feel that standing up and fighting this rising tide of darkness is contrary to what we believe in. That we should stay silent and focus only on meditation, dissipating our anger, and sending thoughts of love out into the world, lest we inadvertently add to the power of the darkness and make it all worse.
What we resist persists, after all.
And I have struggled greatly with this myself. How do I oppose this regime (and make no mistake about it; that is precisely where this is headed) without playing into the hands of a petty tyrant and adding to his power?
How do I help my readers come to terms with this in constructive and conscious ways that align with the concepts of love and light?
Working through the anger
I realized that the first thing I had to do was work through my own anger. Emotions in themselves are never “good” or “bad”. They’re just an indication of where we’re at in any given moment. And trying to squash the ones we consider “negative” never works. You have to let them flow through you before you can clear them out of you.
So I wrote a first draft of this article. And it was angry and despairing. It wouldn’t do.
I wrote a second draft. Still angry. Still wouldn’t do. But boy it felt good channeling my blistering fury about that guy into words.
Catharsis does work.
Making the vibrational shift
I decided to take a social-media break and avoid all Trump-related news items so that I could clear the miasma of outraged horror out of my head and “cleanse my vibe”.
I went and watched Gabby Bernstein’s post-Women’s March vlog about taking action from a place of power. That helped.
Somebody posted a Sean Spicer limerick that made me laugh. (So did this one.) That helped, too. Laughter always helps. It’s something my father taught me a very long time ago, and it helps you to calm yourself and regain your perspective.
Gaining clarity from what you don’t want
When the seething anger began to dissipate, I focused on pivoting my thoughts away from outrage and over to what it was that I wanted to see instead: a world of tolerance and compassion and love for all of humanity.
A world in which cooperation and a mutual understanding are the norm, rather than the exception.
I realized that, in all honesty, what I’d really like to see in our future is Star Trek. An all-human version of that space station – Yorktown – that we saw in Star Trek: Beyond. The big baddie in the movie, of course, was incensed at the thought of “millions of people from every Federation world holding hands” and sought to destroy it.
Win-win situations are possible
It’s kind of like what’s happening now. We’re finally getting to the stage where the environmental slogan from my childhood, “one planet, one people” is starting to look like it could be a reality. I believe that the Women’s Marches all around the world were a sign of this.
But that scares people with superiority complexes who mistakenly believe that they will lose something of value (status, power, wealth, etc.) if equality becomes the norm.
Such people are incapable of acknowledging that win-win situations are possible both within nations and between nations.
Why community is necessary
Such people fail to understand that we are beyond the stage where we can only think in terms of what’s best for one people or one country. Our numbers are too many, and our weapons are too fierce for us not to work together on a future that benefits all.
The increasingly obvious truth to all who would take a moment to really think about it is that we will not survive if we do not make international cooperation our number one priority.
Either we work together in a spirit of trust and understanding and build something of unprecedented beauty and excellence… or we will die together in the inevitable fallout of mutual annihilation wrought by rampant nationalism and blind ignorance.
In my opinion, there are no other avenues left to us. And the future will look back and judge us on how we proceed from this point forth.
All you have to do is be nice
As such, the bizarre tide of anti-globalism that this election seems to have unleashed is both bemusing and exceedingly irrational.
The only way this planet – and the human race – will survive is by forming and strengthening bonds that span all countries, races, and religions.
How do we do that? We follow the “Golden Rule”. When I was a child in grade school, we were taught a simple rhyme: “Do unto others as you would have other do unto you.” And all it means is this: Be nice.
Resentment is easily taken advantage of
For many people, that’s a tall order. In a post 9/11, war-on-terror world, fear is rampant in many quarters. And the thought of cooperation with those the mind associates with the ones who caused such pain and suffering is anathema. Forgiveness seems impossible.
Combine that with the desperation of a people badly affected by an economic downturn, and a tinderbox is ready to explode.
A spirit-based approach to understanding and overcoming Trumpism. Click To TweetWhen human beings feel victimized, they tend to look for someone to blame. And Donald Trump skillfully manipulated that tendency. Resentment is easily taken advantage of, and he deftly crafted a scarecrow to unite an angry populace against a common enemy: the “establishment” and immigrants (in particular, Muslims).
It was the flashpoint that got a megalomaniac elected. And already, we are seeing signs that the fallout will be devastating, if not utterly catastrophic – unless we do something about it.
We’re all in this together
People are slowly starting to realize what having voted in anger is now going to cost them, in terms of the rights, freedoms, and social support systems they have always taken for granted. The repercussions outside of America will also be severe.
And the only way in which we are going to be able to save this situation is by working together. By letting go of the past and allowing ourselves to ALL move forward with a clean slate, in a spirit of solidarity and with a willingness to do what’s best for everyone.
The path of mutual understanding
In other words, we all need to put the sticks away and start sitting down and TALKING to each other and trying our very best to UNDERSTAND each other.
Fear is wrought through ignorance. We fear the unknown and the poorly understood. But in increasing global trade and tourism and cultural exchange, we begin that all-important task of understanding.
We come to know each other, not as Americans or Chinese or Germans, or as Muslims or Christians or Jews, but simply as other human beings. As people, very much like us.
We start to view each other with compassion rather than suspicion.
We begin to create a true global community.
A light in the darkness
My father always told me that Star Trek was an unrealistic, utopian view of the future, but I disagree. I think we have the ability, and the post-inauguration Women’s Marches proved that we have the desire, to create exactly that kind of a beautiful future.
There will always be those who fear letting go of the past.
Those who consider unity, cooperation, and community both a threat and a sign of weakness.
Those who will tirelessly work to further the aims of elitism and intolerance.
Our job, as people of conscience, is to be stronger than they are; to hold the line against tyranny by speaking out against the words and actions of those who would glorify ignorance and oppression as “moral righteousness”.
It is our job to be the light in a growing darkness.
An expression of us all
We must lead through example, the way millions of human beings did during the weekend marches. They showed the world what a human community can look like. Beautiful. Peaceful. Diverse in approach, but united in focus.
The task now is to direct that power into what comes next. How will we use our collective energy, focus, voices, and actions to create that global community that belongs to all of us – that is an expression of all of us?
That is the task. And we will – we must – rise to it.
And for those who remain fearful and who cling to old ways of thinking about our world and our place within it, I ask you to consider these words from Star Trek: Beyond: “We change. We have to. Or we spend the rest of our lives fighting the same battles.”
Photo credit: pixabay.com cc (modified by me)
